Mail Archives: cygwin/2002/01/14/05:33:15
----- Original Message -----
From: "Soren Andersen" <soren_andersen AT speedymail DOT org>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 3:17 PM
> - can one safely assume that a noobie who finds Cygwin grasps that
the
> tools that are packed with cygwin (bash, login, man, for example)
aren't
> specific to Cygwin at all but long predate it, and
Can we? The newbie who finds cygwin because they are told to by a
friend, may not have any unix background, and therefore see *nothing* to
cause them to realise that the tools come from elsewhere - particularly
Win32 users, where MS provide *everything* (or so they may think).
> - can one safely assume that noobies will think "these tools that i
am
> given with Cygwin run the same 'on cygwin' as they do on any
Uni* -like
> platform (and therefore general documentation 'out there' will apply
too),
From experience on this list, I can assert that this is an unsafe
assumption. Many many many questions are asked that are solveable by
simple examination of existing documentation - like the recent lex->flex
question (while I didn't know that answer, that's gotta be a flex FAQ!).
> and
> - can one safely assume that noobies who might even guess at the
first two
> points might not think anyway that "maybe I'll find friendlier, more
> sympathetic folks to hold my trembling timorous hand here, than I
would if
> I ventured onto onto the Wierd Wild Web in search of generalized help
on
> these tools"? (Point of this last is not to characterize the cygwin
list as
> "nasty" or to propose that it self-characterize this way, but to
suggest
> that a LITTLE warning of a slightly stern-sounding nature at the
"front
> door" might be expeditious and appropriate given that folks on this
list
> BAL [By And Large] clearly DON'T want anymore to answer questions like
> "what does man do" or "how do I login to bash").
Good point.
>
> Unless there is one single extremely knowledgeable and
encyclopedically-
> oriented person who knows where to send people (and such people do
exist I
> think, but whether one will care to undertake this is another
question)
> then I think that a little project (or a little "coordinated
multi-person
> collaboration", for lovers of ornate terminology!) needs to be created
to
> develop and verify a list of
> resources to send such visitors to.
>
> The task (of writing up re-directions for some of these categories or
> inquiries) can be done once, -- to set up more precise explanations
and
> info at the site; or it can be done as its been done, repeated over
and
> over again as similar questions appear on the list and are answered
one at
> a time.
I can make an assertion here:
contribute patches. Contribute the links *you know* (come on' after more
than a years use you must have collected a few useful links). Don't
worry about whether they are the best links, that's what open source
doco is for!
If *you* don't, and noone else *does*, then nothing will happen, and in
6 months Chris will say "I've been cogitating..."
As a side note: Perhaps we can have a homepage link in setup.ini (and
thus the package listing too) for each package?
Rob
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